CES season

First of all, the N800, successor of the Nokia 770, running Maemo 3.0 (code name bora) has be released. From the information gatherer, it bump from 64 to 128MB of RAM, get more chutzpah with a more powerful OMAP processor, get 2 MicroSD instead of a RS-MMC, and has an embedded orientable camera for video chat. Otherwise it share the same form factor, no keyboard. Maemo 3.0 does not run on the Nokia 770 but Ari Jaaski discuss about the options like what are the possibilities to provide a developer image for the 770 to test applications for the new Maemo.

Second, a Linux-based media player apparently sponsored by AOL (or one of it subsidiaries) that will sell music online. It does not play open format like Ogg-Vorbis, but MP3 and WMA (with Digital Restrictions Management). Since it runs Linux, it might be possible to provide other features through a custom firmware... SmartScreen, the "framework" used for the device firmware, seems to be more smartphone oriented. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be as open as Maemo. Interestingly its SDK appear to also be running on Linux although not everything... (the whitepaper from 2004 has old screenshots with Gnome 1.4)

This show how Linux on embedded device is really growing.

Oh, and one more thing. A lot of people have noticed iPhone announced by Apple at MacWorld. It does not run Linux (but MacOS X) and does not even seem to be open to third-party development. On the other hand, its user experience, still in a demo stage, sort of raise the bar[1] for future developments.

Update: it is actually SD card slots on the N800. That is very welcome.